President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday encouraged Russians to have more children, saying three per family should be the average, as he seeks to battle an acute demographic crisis upon returning for a third Kremlin term.

"For Russia to be sovereign and strong, there should be more of us," Putin said in his annual speech to the Federal Assembly of both houses of parliament.

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday denounced his opponents who receive financial assistance from abroad and said Russia would not allow democracy to be imposed on it from the outside.

Putin said in his annual state-of-the-nation address that it should be illegal for anyone who receives money from abroad to be a politician in Russia, in a clear stab at his opponents.

Russia President Vladimir Putin came under criticism from rights activists on Tuesday after he compared Vladimir Lenin's embalmed corpse to the holy relics of Christian saints.

In a Monday speech before a group of supporters, Putin spoke against the idea of removing Lenin's mausoleum from Red Square in Moscow where his corpse is housed.

President Vladimir Putin on Monday suggested Russia should revive the Hero of Labor title, a highly-coveted Soviet-era award established in the early years of the USSR to mobilize workers and increase output.

"Of course, I think that it would be good for us to revive the Hero of Labor title, only we need to think, we cannot completely copy the Soviet times," Putin said at a meeting with his 2012 election campaign activists.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday warned Turkey that the NATO deployment of Patriot missiles along its border with Syria could exacerbate tensions.

He met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an Istanbul summit that failed to yield a common response to Syria's conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Turkey on Monday, his first foreign trip since October, to discuss relations and the situation in the Middle East, the Kremlin said.

Wednesday's announcement is the first official confirmation of the date for the long-awaited Putin visit following a delay amid tensions over the Syria conflict and speculation the Russian president was not well enough to travel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday urged both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinians to avoid escalating Gaza violence that has killed 15 Palestinians and three Israelis.

"The president of Russia called on the parties to exercise restraint and avoid the path of escalating violence, whose victims include civilians, and to do everything to return the situation to its normal course," the Kremlin said following a telephone conversation between Putin and Netanyahu.

A Russian court on Tuesday ordered the release on parole of physicist Valentin Danilov, who was convicted of spying for China in 2004 and sentenced to 14 years in a prison colony, an official said.

"Unless one of the sides appeals this decision, Mr. Danilov will be freed in 10 days, when the decision goes into effect," the spokeswoman for Krasnoyarsk regional court Natalia Mishanina, told Agence France Presse.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Friday hailed a "determined" stance from Russia on Iran's nuclear program and said Moscow's position on a range of issues was close to Israel's.

"The positions of the Russians are much more complex than what we think -- more, let's say, on Israel's side on a lot of issues," Peres told Israel's army radio in Moscow at the end of a four-day visit during which he held talks with President Vladimir Putin.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday replaced Russia's army chief of staff with a veteran commander from the second Chechnya war, in a shake-up of the military after the sacking of the defense minister.

Army chief of staff Nikolai Makarov is to be replaced by General Valery Gerasimov, a commander at the North Caucasus military district in the second Chechnya war, Putin announced days after the sacking of defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov in a graft scandal.